Conservative blogger Ed Morrissey (the guy who beat me for "Blogger of the Year" in 2005) and the Michelle Malkin-founded site Hot Air are usually good sources for right-wing political commentary — not Irish music nerdery. And yet Irish music nerdery is exactly what I found there, to my great delight, thanks to my Google News Alert for "’barra macneils’ | ‘liam clancy’ | ‘tommy makem’ | ‘clancy brothers’." Here what Ed wrote on the topic, they day before St. Paddy’s Day*:

“Danny Boy” is a beautiful, haunting song … the first thousand times you hear
it. After that, it gets pretty tiresome, and even more so to those in the Old
Country who tire of supplying renditions of it for American tourists. Irish
music consists of much more than “the pipes, the pipes are calling” and “I’ll
take you home again, Kathleen” — which owe more to America than Ireland. …

The Irish tolerate Danny Boy and the other “Irish songs” of America, but only
just. When my uncle visited Ireland almost 30 years ago, he asked one publican
where he could hear authentic Irish music. The Irishman asked, “Oh, you mean
like Danny Boy and I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen?” “Yes,” my uncle said.
“Nearest place I know is Boston,” came the reply. …

If you want to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with some authentic Irish music, try
listening to The Chieftains, the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, Lunasa, The
Corrs, or even U2.

Hear, hear! (Morrissey later added the Pogues and The Dubliners to his list. I’d add the
Wolfe Tones, the Irish Rovers and, for a rather different but still related style,
Flogging Molly. And then you can branch out into Irish-inspired Atlantic Canadian bands like Great Big Sea, the Barra MacNeils, etc.)

I have to make a confession, though. For all my nodding in agreement with Captain Ed and making fun of the "sort of maudlin stuff that Bing Crosby sang," yesterday I totally cued up "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" on my iPod and, in unison with ol’ Bing, sang it to my shamrock-clad baby girl, in honor of St. Paddy’s Day. I feel so… dirty. :) But hey: she does have really beautiful Irish eyes. And when they’re smiling, they’ll steal your heart away!

Hey, sometimes it’s okay to be maudlin. :)

(Relevant background for those who haven’t read it: "Tommy Makem, 1932-2007 … and what he means to me." More here.)

*Or the day after St. Paddy’s Day, depending on your perspective.

…a very blessed Saint Patrick’s Day to one and All ~ and a reasonably ;> Enjoyable one as well.

:}

And here you always thought March Madness consists merely of Basketball, Politics, and half-arsed-baked Recruitment Center Bombings in Times Square but OH No: now it’s Katie bar th’ Door to boot ~

It’s depressing, it’s not usually sung in Ireland for St. Patrick’s Day, and its lyrics were written by an Englishman who never set foot on Irish soil.

Those are only some of the reasons why a Manhattan pub owner is banning the song “Danny Boy” for the entire month of March.

“It’s overplayed, it’s been ranked among the 25 most depressing songs of all time and it’s more appropriate for a funeral than for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration,” said Shaun Clancy, who owns Foley’s Pub and Restaurant, across the street from the Empire State Building.

The 38-year-old Clancy, who started bartending when he was 12 at his father’s pub in County Cavan, Ireland, promised a free Guinness to patrons who sing any other traditional Irish song** at the pub’s pre-St. Patrick’s Day karaoke party on Tuesday.

…At least one patron at Foley’s was glad to hear the song was banned from the pub for the rest of the month.

The song is “all right, but I get fed up with hearing it — it’s like the elections,” Martin Gaffney, 73, said in a thick Irish brogue…

(more…)

InstaPundit: “BLOGGER ANDREW OLMSTED has died in Iraq. (Via Blackfive). He left a last post for publication in this event; you can leave a note of condolence for his family in the comments, but please, nothing political. Here’s his blog, always worth reading.”

Like Brendan’s below on the tiny Tunguska asteroid :), this story is a couple of days old but Here it is anyway.

A judge in Belfast Crown Court has ruled Sean Hoey, 38, an electrician from south County Armagh, not guilty in the hideous terrorist bombing in Omagh, County Tyrone, whereby the execrable RIRA (”Real Irish Republican Army”) slaughtered 29 innocent children, women and men in August of 1998.

Apparently the Northern Ireland police botched their evidence, and the prosecutors their presentation, so thoroughly that the charges were impossible to prove. The judge was reportedly scathing in his analysis of the authorities’ performance in the case.

None of which, quite obviously, provides any Justice to the families of the victims of the mass murder; nor can it ever tell us whether Mr. Hoey, in addition to being now legally Not Guilty, is or is not also factually Innocent of having functioned as the RIRA Bombmaker ~ which we can now only hope (as he of course claims) that he really, actually, truly did Not.

The BBC’s Kevin Connolly gives us a good overview, well worth reading in full, of the whole horrid business, including these telling passages:

…But more than anything, for the rest of us, it was the timing of the attack on Omagh which burned it into our memories.

It came just four months after Northern Ireland’s fractious political parties made a political deal which included Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA.

It tore apart a community in a province which was beginning to learn to hope after decades of despair - and it made people fear that the new dawn which had promised so much, would be quickly and cruelly extinguished.

Like the other bombings in the early part of 1998 in places like Lisburn and Banbridge, Omagh was a conscious attempt by republicans who disagreed with the political strategy of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, to destabilise Northern Ireland in that vulnerable moment of hope.

It failed - but there is a terrible irony to the way in which the campaign was halted only by the wave of revulsion triggered by the carnage at Omagh.

…The Omagh families were dignified in defeat, as they have been dignified at every stage of their fight for justice. Their campaigning will go on, but the prospect is surely receding now that anyone will ever be convicted of murdering their husbands and brothers and sisters and wives and children.

As this case fades from our memories it’s worth remembering the victims of all Northern Ireland’s atrocities for whom the pain is not fading even as the province heads into a more hopeful future.

Amen.

I looked into his soul, and I saw fascism:

A Russian opposition activist has been sent to a psychiatric hospital by authorities a day before a planned demonstration. …

His case is the latest example of journalists or opposition activists being involuntarily committed to psychiatric hospitals in Russia.

During the Soviet era, dissidents were frequently committed for protesting against Soviet policies.

Well, in light of Putin’s ever-growing dictatorial tendencies, a case can be made that you’ve got to be crazy to oppose him.

Between college football chaos and baby preparations, I haven’t had much time to follow the news lately, but the big story from a couple days ago is that Iran apparently isn’t going nuclear after all, at least not as imminently as we feared:

A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains
frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working
relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.

The conclusions of the new assessment are likely to reshape the
final year of the Bush administration, which has made halting Iran’s
nuclear program a cornerstone of its foreign policy.

The
assessment, a National Intelligence Estimate that represents the
consensus view of all 16 American spy agencies, states that Tehran is
likely keeping its options open with respect to building a weapon, but
that intelligence agencies “do not know whether it currently intends to
develop nuclear weapons.”

Iran is continuing to produce enriched
uranium, a program that the Tehran government has said is designed for
civilian purposes. The new estimate says that enrichment program could
still provide Iran with enough raw material to produce a nuclear weapon
sometime by the middle of next decade, a timetable essentially
unchanged from previous estimates.

But the new estimate declares
with “high confidence” that a military-run Iranian program intended to
transform that raw material into a nuclear weapon has been shut down
since 2003, and also says with high confidence that the halt “was
directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and
pressure.”

The estimate does not say when American intelligence agencies
learned that the weapons program had been halted, but a statement
issued by Donald Kerr, the principal director of national intelligence,
said the document was being made public “since our understanding of
Iran’s capabilities has changed.”

Rather than painting Iran as a
rogue, irrational nation determined to join the club of nations with
the bomb, the estimate states Iran’s “decisions are guided by a
cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of
the political, economic and military costs.” The administration called
new attention to the threat posed by Iran earlier this year when
President Bush had suggested in October that a nuclear-armed Iran could
lead to “World War III” and Vice President Dick Cheney promised “serious consequences” if the government in Tehran did not abandon its nuclear program.

I haven’t read much of anything in the way of commentary on this, so I can only assume that the right is spinning this as "Iran is still a threat, those intelligence guys are a bunch of liberal ninnies anyway" and the left is spinning it as "See! See! We told you! Bush lies! It’s a rush to war!" But if anyone can point me to some actually insightful commentary on the issue, I’d certainly be interested in reading it.

Personally, my initial take is that, first of all, this report, if accurate, is obviously a good thing, notwithstanding the fact that it gives Mad Mahmoud an opportunity to declare "victory" (he’s kind of a cheap date, ain’t he?), because Iran without nukes > Iran with nukes, and also, no war > war. It’s only if those two equations come into conflict that we have a major problem, and this report — particularly the part I boldfaced in the last blockquoted paragraph — seems to suggest that maybe, just maybe, they might not come into conflict after all.

Also, frankly, even if we still have to eventually confront Iran over its nuclear ambitions (or about something else), it would be far better if we can wait until the president is no longer named Bush. He’s damaged goods both internationally and domestically, and his incompetent administration has generally proven incapable of successfully carrying out its objectives even when those objectives are correct. So even delaying a confrontation would be a good thing, in my mind (provided that the delay doesn’t worsen the problem, obviously), though obviously not as good as avoiding it altogether.

Secondly, the release of this report is actually a major rebuke to the "Bush lied" crowd. If the administration was the evil, soulless, fascist warmongering machine that so many on the left believe it is, then how did this report even get released? It sure throws a monkey wrench into the "Bush’s rush to war" narrative when the president’s own administration is releasing reports (with a big media splash, no less) that discredit said alleged rush. And if you want to respond that "Bush doesn’t control these people," that rather seriously complicates the argument that he muzzled them in the run-up to Iraq. Either the spooks are his puppets or they’re not, and if they’re not, they must have actually believed the faulty intelligence on Iraq’s WMD, no? In which case, Bush didn’t lie! Either way, the release of this report almost seems to suggest that most people in the administration (possibly even including the president!) actually, you know, care about the facts, and are motivated by a genuine desire to do the right thing (leaving aside the separate question of whether that desire is misguided in a given instance), rather than by a motivation to take over the Middle East for oil profits, or kill all the brown people, or whatever it is the Kos & Kucinich Kidz are accusing them of these days. I am shocked, shocked I tell you.

Anyway, in summary, No Iranian nukes = good. No World War III = good. Honesty with the American people = good. Bush = incompetent, not evil. And that’s about as sophisticated as my commentary is going to get at the moment. I’m curious what y’all think, though.

P.S. In other news, Dick Cheney says Democratic representatives John Dingell and John Murtha have small penises. Hey, remember that time Dick Cheney shot a guy in the face? HAHAHA. That was awesome.

Pakistan continues to go to hell in a handbasket, and Iran’s nuclear ambitions have reached a critical, potentially war-triggering juncture.

Why do I suddenly have Tom Lehrer running through my head? "This is the song that some of the boys sang as they went bravely off to World War III…"

Anyway, this has been your international news update. We now return you to your BCS controversy, Hollywood writer’s strike, and Trials of the Century (O.J. and Barry), already in progress.

They say that in ‘artford, ‘ereford, and ‘ampshire, ‘urricanes ‘ardly hever ‘appen. However, in Norfolk, Suffolk, Kent, Essex, North Yorks and Lincs, they’re preparing for a wicked storm surge. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called an emergency Cobra meeting to address the situation, which could turn life-threatening. (Hat tip: Peter Evans.)

The Times of London reports:

A claim by President Ahmadinejad that Iran has 3,000 working uranium-enriching
centrifuges sent a tremor across the world yesterday amid fears that Israel
would respond by bombing the country’s nuclear facilities.

Military sources in Washington said that the existence of such a large number
could be a “tipping point”, triggering an Israeli air strike. The Pentagon
is reluctant to take military action against Iran, but officials say that
Israel is a “different matter”. Amid the international uproar, British MPs
who were to have toured the nuclear facility were backing out of their Iran
trip.

Even before President Ahmadinejad’s announcement, a US defence official told
The Times yesterday: “Israel could do something when they get to around
3,000 working centrifuges. The Pentagon is minded to wait a little longer.”
US experts say 3,000 machines running for long periods could make enough
enriched uranium for an atomic bomb within a year.

Somebody get Les Miles over there, stat.

First, there was the fake interview with Les Miles. Then, the fake brain x-ray. And now, via the great (and broke) road-tripping Jonathan Tu, this piece of comedy gold:

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - After four days of martial law and nearly eight
years under former President Pervez Musharraf, the Republic of Pakistan
was restored to order by LSU (8-1, 5-1 SEC West) head coach Les Miles,
who parachuted into the Muslim country in a daring pre-dawn raid.

“People of Pakistan, you are free!” Miles shouted from the highest step of the Pakistani House of Parliament.

Heh.

Next season on 24: Jack Bauer finally meets his match… Les Miles.

I have no problem with hawkish bloggers and columnists saying things like this, but, um, shouldn’t the President of the United States be a little bit more circumspect with his rhetoric?

"We’ve got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel," Bush said at a White House press conference after Russia cautioned against military action against Tehran’s supect atomic program. "So I’ve told people that, if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon," said Bush.

I agree that Iran’s nuclear ambitions are a grave threat to world peace, and not just because there are some trigger-happy people in the White House right now (though, that too). But I’m not convinced that having the president say things like this, in public — even if arguably somewhat true — makes things better. Perhaps I’m wrong, though. Thoughts?

UPDATE: Via Hot Air by way of InstaPundit, here’s the video:

In a related story, Bush still can’t say “nuclear.”

This picture makes me nervous, somehow:

Story here.

Well, that’s what the Marines are saying, anyway.

The spin given by the Corps is that the Army can take care of Iraq, but it’s messing up in Afghanistan.  By sending in the Marines, at least they claim, the Marines can help fix up Afghanistan.

The other spin (that is, the antiwar spin) is that Iraq has gotten so bad that the Marines just want out.  I couldn’t find a link on that, but I heard this argument on the Bill Press show this morning.

Of course there was. Will the U.S. Congress finally acknowledge it? That’s a more complicated question. President Bush hopes the answer is no.